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July 15, 2002
The proposal to create a new super-agency, the ominously Germanic-sounding Department of Homeland Security (HomeSec) that would absorb everything but the FBI and the CIA into a giant bureaucratic sinkhole the BorgBureau has certainly debunked the idea that central planning has been discredited. The American government's response to the 9/11 terror attack, if it succeeds at nothing else, has successfully raised the spirit of socialist "efficiency" from the dead. For this compulsive monolithism is the central organizing principle of Marxism an ideology thought to have crumbled with the fall of the Berlin Wall, yet now being rebuilt, brick by brick, in Washington. But not without determined opposition from a newly active Congress .
The good news is that George Bush isn't going to get his BorgBureau, at least not in the form he originally envisioned. The Coast Guard has wriggled free of HomeSec's embrace! Of all the government agencies in existence, the Coast Guard is one of the very few that, come the Revolution, ought to be kept. Indeed, if the physical defense of the nation is the main (if not the only) function of the feds under a limited government regime, then we ought to stand this proposal on its head and insist that all "defense" and 'intelligence" agencies be absorbed into the Coast Guard.
"When the course of civilization takes an unexpected turn when, instead of the continuous progress which we have come to expect we find ourselves threatened by evils associated by us with past ages of barbarism we naturally blame anything but ourselves."
Noam Chomsky? Arundhati Roy? Robert Fisk?
Try F. A. Hayek: it's the opening sentence of his seminal book, The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944. Wisdom for the ages .
I don't usually comment on matters not pertaining to foreign policy, but in this case I think the videotaped beating of a handcuffed teenager by out-of-control officers and the subsequent arrest of the videotaper! is yet more anecdotal evidence that we are well along down the road to serfdom. As one cop picks up the youth helpless, at that point, and not resisting and jams his face onto the back end of a patrol car, another pig punches the kid square in the jaw. Naturally, they were white, and do we even need to ask if their victim was black? The Reuters report adds:
"Two other officers, who appeared to be black and Latino, were observed at the scene."
Yeah, no doubt thinking to themselves: there, but for the grace of God, go I .
The videotaper, Mitchell Crooks, was later scooped up by cops outside the Hollywood offices of CNN. The Associated Press reports:
"As he was driven off, he repeatedly screamed, 'Help me, help me.'"
He had good reason to scream. Crooks had repeatedly stated in that he wouldn't show up in court because he was afraid of a police beating. His fears were justified, it seems. CNN reports:
"Crooks was taken to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Men's Central Jail after his release from the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Healthcare Network hospital Friday. He was taken to the hospital Thursday after complaining of injuries."
Why was he arrested? The cops did a little research on Crooks and found an outstanding warrant. He was previously arrested in February 1999 for stealing a couple of VCRs from his mother's home, driving while intoxicated, and leaving the scene of a wreck. Sentenced to jail time, he never showed up. Obviously a major criminal. But the Los Angeles District Attorney's office didn't seem too concerned with his criminal past: "Let's put it this way," Chief Deputy D.A. Curt Livesay told the Los Angeles Times. "Had we been able to secure his presence on the first day, the second day or the third day, we wouldn't have even known about the warrants. He could have been here and gone and been free today."
The last time anybody saw Crooks, he was being hauled out of a police station tethered to a hospital gurney, handcuffed and dazed, on his way to the hospital. He has since been flown to Placer County, where he will face criminal charges. The moral of this story? Videotape a crime go to jail .
This sort of thing happens in non-white communities all the time. So what else is new? Well, how about this: Aside from the brazenness of going after the Ingleside videotaper, rampaging cops are also going after . whitebread reporters from National Review! Yes, it's true. It seems National Review Online writer Joel Mowbray was "detained," as the magazine's own account puts it, at the State Department after reading from a classified State Department document at a press briefing:
"When Mowbray was leaving the briefing, a State Department official, accompanied by four guards, asked him to stay to answer a few questions. Mowbray said he could come back later. The official said, no, they wanted him to answer a few questions immediately.
"When Mowbray began to get the feeling that he couldn't leave even if he wanted to, he asked, "Am I being detained?"
Well, uh, yes what did he expect after revealing the contents of a classified document? Doesn't Mowbray know there's a war on? As Deroy Murdock, complaining about journalists blabbing US secrets, put it in National Review Online [October 10, 2001]:
"Now that Operation Enduring Freedom has exploded into a full-blown shooting war, journalists and their official sources urgently must clam up about sensitive military and intelligence matters. Media coverage of the September 11 massacre investigation and subsequent allied response has been a rich feast for news junkies. Unfortunately, terrorists and their state sponsors may be enjoying this banquet, too."
Hear that, Mowbray? Clam up!
After all, it's the spirit of the times: shut up, pledge allegiance to the flag, and obey our glorious leaders. Either that, or you'll unleash the Floodgates of Anarchy. And anarchy is something the authorities simply will not tolerate except in the case of certain government agencies as 15-year-old Katie Sierra found out when she tried to organized her Anarchy Club at Sissonville High School, in Charleston, West Virginia. The Thought Police (Pedagogical Division) not only rejected her proposed club they suspended her for three days, as the Associated Press reports,
"Because she had fliers at her desk promoting her proposed club after administrators rejected it."
Aha! Forbidden literature! Seize her!
Possession of subversive samizdata, it seems, is the least of Katie's crimes:
"Principal Forrest Mann also ordered Sierra not to wear T-shirts with handwritten messages that included, "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God Bless America."
What dopes these public school administrators are! As one of the few public school students who can write a simple declarative sentence, Katie should be commended, not persecuted. Good for her for taking her fight to a trial by jury. I hope she appeals their Bizarro World verdict, which merely underscores the bullying stupidity of her persecutors. The AP reports that "the jury agreed with the school board's argument that such messages disrupted other students' education" but that's only if one equates education with indoctrination.
What about a school debate over the ideas expressed on that t-shirt? Maybe this would help students learn the rudiments of how to make an argument, improve their language skills, and encourage them to think for themselves. Isn't that what education is supposed to be about?
My message to high school students everywhere is this: challenge your teachers to do their job. Isn't that what we're paying them for? Your parents are taxpayers, and you need to enlist their support. Not only that, but you need to remember that every public school administrator is your enemy: he or she is the implacable opponent of free speech and free thought. It's the nature of the job, and the State-controlled "public" school system, which was founded as an instrument of mass indoctrination. Your goal: overthrow the administration. Take your fight to the community, the school board, the streets .
Gee, I'm sounding pretty left-wing, these days, don'tcha think? Franklin Foer you remember him thinks so, too, and, well, he's ready to report me to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, or whatever they're calling it these days, as get ready a leader of "the anti-globalization left"! In an article on Buchanan's new magazine, The American Conservative, in The New Republic, Foer writes:
"There is, however, one group that shares the Buchananite docket of suspicions--of Wall Street, capitalism, Zionism, American power: the anti-globalization left. Indeed, Buchanan has fitfully wooed them . During his 2000 presidential bid, he said he hoped to turn the Reform Party into the 'Peace Party.' Some of his aides-de-camp have gone further, taking Buchananism to its logical left-wing conclusions. Justin Raimondo, an adviser to Buchanan's 1996 campaign and a historian of the old right, runs Antiwar.com. The site posts screeds against American interventionism that complain about 'empire' and 'increased military spending.' And by lifting the language of the left, he has acquired an audience on the left: The Nation's Alexander Cockburn has published a column on the site, and Salon and alternative newsweeklies plug his work. For his part, Raimondo is unabashed about his ideological transformation. Last month he wrote on his site, 'The only voices of dissent are heard, today, on the Left. ... This is where all the vitality, the rebelliousness, the willingness to challenge the rules and strictures of an increasingly narrow and controlled national discourse has resided.'"
My status as a leftist cult figure will no doubt astonish the dozens of Commies who write in every week descrying my slams of Noam Chomsky, and my digs at the left-led antiwar movement not to mention my defense of George W. Bush's election victory against the Clintonian coup plotters. Just as my status as a "campaign advisor" to Buchanan will no doubt astonish PJB, whose friendship I value and who never appointed me to any such position. Whatever influence my ideas have is another question. Nor do I have any connection with The American Conservative, other than as a possible market for my work.
No one who reads what is posted on Antiwar.com could possibly mistake us for "anti-globalization" protectionists: we regularly feature articles and links pointing out the benefits of free trade, and that is a point I dissented from in my otherwise enthusiastic support for Buchanan's views on foreign policy. As for Antiwar.com or this column appropriating "the language of the left," precisely the opposite is the case and that is what the War Party (historically embodied, in the world of political magazines, by The New Republic) finds so disorienting. We frame our arguments against this perpetual war for perpetual peace in terms of the damage it does to the Constitution and the legacy of the founding fathers, a libertarian heritage anchored in the idea of strictly limited government. "A republic, not an empire"! this is the language of the left?
Jeezy-peezy, I'm a writer, fer chrissake, not some party leader, and I don't have a "following" I have readers, lots of them. And they read critically: I know, because I hear from them all the time. I don't have followers, I have fans. The former robotic drones who parrot back whatever the party leaders tell them, only louder are perfect fodder for politicians, left and right, but of absolutely no interest to writers, who tend to be a solitary lot. Fans, however, are quite a different story. What writer doesn't want them? My fans disagree with much of what I write and habitually log on to my "screed" (as The New Republic characterizes Antiwar.com's material) first thing in the morning.
Foer's article goes on at length about how Buchanan's new magazine, The American Conservative, is doomed to fail for all sorts of reasons, first of all because Taki Theodoracopulos is funding it: he's an "aristocrat," but Pat "venerates the working class." How strange that liberalism has come so far from its popular roots that concern for the fate of ordinary people is now considered some sort of Marxist plot. Foer dutifully echoes David Brooks' boast that "we're all neocons now" it's funny how these neos, left and right, all stick together -- and claims the conservative movement has already been turned into a subsidiary of the Committee to Free Jonathan Pollard. The anti-globalist Right has been "extinguished," he avers:
"At first glance, September 11 seemed to add fuel to Buchanan's critique. What better evidence for Fortress America than the spectacle of visa-finagling foreigners blowing up lower Manhattan? Buchanan wrote a quickie book, The Death of the West, about the swarthy menace; and across Europe his brand of nativism began harvesting votes in record number. But over time it has become clear that on this side of the Atlantic, 9/11 hasn't boosted the isolationist right; it has extinguished it. Instead of America Firstism, September 11 has produced a war on terrorism that has virtually ended conservative qualms about expending blood and treasure abroad. And as a corollary, it has produced an unprecedented eruption of conservative and evangelical support for Israel. The conservative establishment has co-opted post-9/11 fears of Muslim immigration, and Bush has covered his protectionist flank on trade. In short, Buchanan and his rich friends couldn't have chosen a worse time to start a journal of the isolationist right."
To begin with, Foer hasn't got his "swarthy menaces" straight. Hispanic rather than Muslim immigration seems to me to be the main danger to the national character singled out in The Death of the West. While George W. Bush was campaigning in Spanish, the anti-immigration Right seethed: these, after all, are the folks who believe our de facto policy of an open border on the Rio Grande represents a direct threat to US sovereignty over the American Southwest.
As for the alleged "end" of "conservative qualms about expending blood and treasure abroad," I wouldn't be so sure about that. At a time when the economy is tanking and some say we are this close to a stock market meltdown, how many conservative Republican members of Congress want to go to their constituents with the message that Saddam Hussein is the worst of their problems? If I were Foer, before I got too puffed up and complacent about the "final" victory of neocon-ism on the Right, I would take a look at the historical record. Foer's "end of isolationism" meme, along with "the end of ideology," the "end of history," and all the other false finales proclaimed by neocons past, present, and future, exemplifies what George Orwell discussing the invariable wrongness of proto-neocon James Burnham's predictions diagnosed as one of the principal intellectual afflictions of the modern age:
"Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia forever, if the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo; if the Russians are in Berlin, it will not be long before they are in London; and so on."
The power that is being worshipped today is, of course, American power, not German or Japanese, but what Orwell called "this habit of mind" is fully operative all the same. Indeed, with the US in the position of a world hegemon, or "hyperpower," as the French put it, this mental framework dominates the punditocracy, both left and right, so thoroughly that they think nothing of calling for the invasion and longterm occupation of Iraq and, perhaps, much more of the Middle East, to be accompanied by a massive "democratization" campaign. Never mind the cost. Oh, the invasion of Iraq will be a cakewalk, we are assured, which brings us to another aspect of Power Worship Syndrome (PWS):
"That leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. The rise and fall of empires, the disappearance of cultures and religions, are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end."
The headline of Foer's piece proclaims: "Buchanan's Surefire Flop" alerting us to yet another outbreak of PWS, a mental disability that is surely reaching epidemic proportions.
At a time of perpetual war, when conservatives and liberals seem to be glomming together in an obscene mosh-pit embrace, the triumph of the neos, left and right, means that all parties are the War Party, united on a program of Big Government at home and interventionism abroad. All together now: everybody shout "Amen!" Short of abolishing the Constitution, and instituting an authoritarian regime, it's the penultimate method of suppressing dissent. But not so fast .
"Complaining about 'empire,'" as Foer characterizes Antiwar.com's editorial position, is not limited to the left, just as a concern for individual liberty is not the exclusive prerogative of the Right. The question is whether the American people are prepared to pay the costs of Empire not only in troops and treasure, but in terms of our character as a people. Will we survive its corrupting influence on our politics and our culture? As Walter Russell Mead points out in Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World quite possibly the best book ever on the subject this essentially Jeffersonian suspicion of foreign entanglements suffuses American political culture. To limit that sentiment to the "left" or the "right" terms almost meaningless in the present context is arbitrary and, with the passage of time, will be shown to be false especially if the Republicans fail to hold on to the White House. Speaking of which .
You know how I hate to toot my own horn (yeah, right!), but Raimondamus has been proved correct again! Bob Novak reports that the Bullsh*t Express may be on the road again, with John McCain rumored to be giving up his Senate seat and possibly launching a third-party campaign for the White House. I predicted it as long ago as June 4, 2001, and as recently as May 1.
Welcome Michael Ewens, our new intern! Mike is currently a senior at Washington University in St. Louis. Apart from his full-time student status, he is actively involved in the campus libertarian newspaper, College Libertarians and inner city tutoring programs. Economics and mathematics occupy his academic time, while his intellectual curiosity is further satisfied with political theory and foreign affairs. Among his various other duties, Mike will be helping me with the editorial side of Antiwar.com's operations, as well as heading up our new Campus Activism Project. We're lining up colleges for a speaking tour for yours truly in the fall, and so if you're interested in having me come to your campus you can email Mike at: firstname.lastname@example.com.
And, who knows, maybe Bill Bennett and David Horowitz will accept our standing challenges to debate them anytime, anyplace.
Oh, and check this out: Mike will be writing a column, posted five days a week whew! summarizing the days news. We call it "From the Front," and its good stuff .
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Text-only printable version of this article
Archived columns
In Praise of Subversion7/15/02
Ein Volk, Ein Fuehrer, Ein Israel... 7/12/02
A Matter of Fact 7/10/02
9/11 Revised Edition 7/8/02
The VOA Follies 7/5/02
Pure Evil 7/3/02
Look on the Bright Side 7/1/02
'In Government We Trust'? 6/28/02
'Amen To That!' 6/26/02
Baba Wawa's Whitewash6/24/02
Treason is the Reason 6/21/02
Punditry in the Age of Terrorism 6/19/02
The Wimpy American 6/17/02
Bookmarks 6/14/02
The Age of Malarkey 6/12/02
Living in a Soviet America 6/10/02
Turn Toward the Left6/7/02
Go Left, Young Man6/5/02
In the Shadow of Shiva6/3/02
Unsolved Mysteries of 9/11 5/31/02
A Victory For Peace 5/29/02
Classic Raimondo: Who is Ariel Sharon? 5/27/02
The Palestinian Pimpernel5/24/02
Investigate 9/11 5/22/02
America Awakes5/20/02
Israel's Taliban5/17/02
Spinning A Spy Scandal5/15/02
The Fearmongers5/13/02
The Story of the Century 5/10/02
Assassins of Liberty 5/8/02
Showdown With Sharon 5/6/02
Long Live Libertarianism! 5/3/02
Reading the Tea Leaves 5/1/02
Israel: A Socialist Sparta 4/29/02
Winning Through Intimidation 4/26/02
The Meaning of Le Pen 4/24/02
The Meaning of Jenin 4/22/02
Agents of Influence 4/19/02
Smearing Alex Cockburn 4/17/02
Beware the Red Heifer 4/15/02
American Likudniks 4/12/02
Short Takes 4/10/02
Who's Afraid of Virginia Postrel? 4/8/02
The Anti-Americans 4/5/02
The Real Anti-Semitism 4/3/02
Putting Israel First 4/1/02
Anthrax As Metaphor 3/29/02
Our Hijacked Foreign Policy 3/25/02
The Truth, At Last 3/22/02
What Are We Fighting For? 3/20/02
Big Bill is Watching You 3/18/02
Israel vs. America 3/15/02
The Urban Myth Gambit 3/13/02
The Doomsday Doctrine 3/11/02
9/11: The Truth Comes Out 3/8/02
Victimology and Foreign Policy 3/6/02
The Tide Turns 3/4/02
Georgia On My Mind 3/1/02
The Plot Sickens 2/27/02
Go, Slobo, Go! 2/25/02
Anthrax Cover-Up? 2/22/02
Pope Poddy's Papal Bull 2/20/02
World of Unreason 2/18/02
The Olympic War 2/15/02
Bizarro World 2/13/02
National Review's Military Socialism 2/11/02
9/11 Cover Up? 2/8/02 How Everything Changed 2/6/02 Saudiphobes Target Neil Bush 2/4/02
Never Mind Osama 2/1/02
'Crony Capitalism' & War 1/30/02
The Tali-Boy: Made in the USA 1/28/02
PC Imperialism 1/25/02
The War Against the Saudis 1/23/02
Gucci Goes to War 1/21/02
Manufacturing Dissent 1/18/02
The Warbloggers 1/16/02
The Vanishing Imam 1/14/02
The Pilot Who Lost His Cool 1/11/02
The Big Change (Part II) 1/9/02
The Big Change (Part I) 1/7/02
India's 'Amen Corner' 1/4/02
India's Terrorist Minister 1/2/02
Fasten Your Seatbelts 12/31/01
Strange Symbiosis Israel & Anti-Semitism 12/28/01
Sauron in Washington 12/24/01
Now You See It, Now You Don't 12/22/01
The Secret War 12/21/01
The 9/11 Enigma 12/19/01
9/11 What Was Israel's Role? 12/17/01
Et Tu, Israel? 12/14/01
Warmongers on the Left 12/12/01
The Horror of It All 12/10/01
Horowitz Goes Haywire Again 12/8/01
Fear Has Its Uses 12/7/01
Horowitz Goes Haywire 12/5/01
Ashcroft's Reign of Terror 12/3/01
The Oil Factor 11/30/01
Israel and 9/11 11/28/01
It Can Happen Here 11/26/01
Retro-Reality 11/23/01
A Grade-B War Movie 11/21/01
Death & The Wall Street Journal 11/19/01
Let's Declare Victory 11/16/01
"Islamo-Fascism" The New Bogeyman 11/14/01
The War is a Trap 11/12/01
Politics and the War 11/9/01
What War Has Wrought 11/7/01
Two Wars at Once 11/5/01
Anthrax On My Mind 11/2/01
Attack of the McCaniacs 10/31/01
Osama in the Balkans 10/29/01
The Anthrax Conundrum 10/26/01
Don't They Know There's a War On? 10/24/01
Noonan's Madness 10/22/01
The Halloween War 10/19/01
The Musharraf Solution 10/17/01
The Peaceniks 10/15/01
A Saudi-9/11 Connection? 10/12/01
The Anthrax War 10/10/01
Wartime Madness 10/8/01
Ku Klux Coulter 10/5/01
The Incompetence of Empire 10/3/01
Hidden Agendas 10/1/01
Kill 'Em And Get Out 9/28/01
Operation Infinite Arrogance 9/26/01
American Imperium 9/24/01
The Cassandra Complex 9/21/01
What Goes Around 9/19/01
The Third World War 9/17/01
War Hysteria Addles the Brain 9/14/01
Imperial Paralysis 9/12/01
The Price of Hegemony 9/11/01
War by Proxy 9/10/01
Standing Up for Macedonia 9/7/01
Previous columns
Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is also the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (1993), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against US Intervention in the Balkans (1996). He is an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in Auburn, Alabama, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Libertarian Studies, and writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard.


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dc.contributor.author | LYKIDI, Maria | |
dc.contributor.author | GLACHANT, Jean-Michel | |
dc.contributor.author | GOURDEL, Pascal | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2010-10-04T08:52:33Z | |
dc.date.available | 2010-10-04T08:52:33Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2010 | |
dc.identifier.issn | 1028-3625 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1814/14617 | |
dc.description | Loyola de Palacio Programme on Energy Policy | en |
dc.description.abstract | In many countries, the electricity systems are quitting the vertically integrated monopoly organization for an operation framed by competitive markets. In such a competitive regime one can ask what the optimal management of the nuclear generation set is. We place ourselves in a medium-term horizon of the management in order to take into account the seasonal variation of the demand level between winter (high demand) and summer (low demand). A flexible nuclear set is operated to follow a part of the demand variations. In this context, nuclear fuel stock can be analyzed like a reservoir since nuclear plants stop periodically (every 12 or 18 months) to reload their fuel. The operation of the reservoir allows different profiles of nuclear fuel uses during the different seasons of the year. We analyze it within a general deterministic dynamic framework with two types of generation: nuclear and non-nuclear thermal. We study the optimal management of the production in a perfectly competitive market. Then, we build a very simple numerical model (based on data from the French market) with nuclear plants being not operated strictly as base load power plants but within a flexible dispatch frame (like the French nuclear set). Our simulations explain why we must anticipate future demand to manage the current production of the nuclear set (myopia can not be total). Moreover, it is necessary in order to ensure the equilibrium supply-demand, to take into account the non-nuclear thermal capacities in the management of the nuclear set. They also suggest that non-nuclear thermal could stay marginal during most of the year including the months of low demand. | en |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
dc.language.iso | en | en |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | EUI RSCAS | |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | 2010/68 | |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | Loyola de Palacio Programme on Energy Policy | |
dc.rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess | |
dc.subject | Electricity Market | en |
dc.subject | nuclear generation | en |
dc.subject | optimal reservoir operation | en |
dc.subject | electricity fuel mix | en |
dc.subject | perfect competition with reservoir | en |
dc.title | Modelling the effects of nuclear fuel reservoir operation in a competitive electricity market | en |
dc.type | Working Paper | en |
eui.subscribe.skip | true |


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The drum kit can be one of the most time-consuming and frustrating of instruments to record, so it's worth taking a structured approach.
Hugh Robjohns
The phenomenal advances in integrated drum machines and sample-based drum sources controlled by sequencers mean that few of us bother recording real drum kits any more. However, there are still a large number of drummers out there (they haven't all been caught yet!) and some people still like the sound of real drums. So this article has been written to try to provide some useful pointers and guidance on how to record drums effectively with the resources available.
Setting Up The Drums
The typical drum kit consists of a kick drum, snare, a couple of tom-toms mounted on stalks from the kick drum, a floor tom, a hi-hat, and a couple of cymbals maybe a crash and a ride. Obviously, many drummers have a lot more to hit than this simple list, while some make do with less. The overriding element, though, is that it is all percussion. It sounds obvious, doesn't it so why say it? Well, the thing about percussion is that it is very transient-rich and it's usually damn loud! Naturally, that affects the kinds of microphones we choose and use, the kind of processing that we apply, and the problems we can expect to encounter along the way.
As may now be obvious from the preceding paragraph, I'm no expert in drum kits, just as I know little about the different makes of Tuba or Bassoon the choice and detail is down to the musician playing the instrument. Howev With tom-toms and snares it is important that the head is tensioned equally around its rim. This is best done by backing all the tensioner keys off completely, then winding them up by hand until they just start to get tight. From this starting point, adjust keys in pairs on opposite sides of the head, much like you would the nuts on a car wheel. Start with a full turn (maybe two) to take up the tension, then apply a heavy pressure to the centre of the head to stretch it a little and help it to equalise its position. Next, continue winding up the tension a half turn at a time, working on opposite pairs of nuts all around the head, until the desired pitch is achieved. You can check for an The drum shell forms a resonant cavity and so the tuning of the head is dependent on the tuning of the shell get the two properly matched and the shell reinforces the sound of the head, giving a loud, full tone. On snares (and toms if applicable), the bottom head is tuned in the same way, but its tuning relative to the top head is the critical thing. When the bottom head is removed from a tom it tends to make the drum louder, and affords a wider tuning range because the resonant frequency of the shell is broader. However, if the bottom head is fitted its tuning is critical. Tuning higher than the top head (up to about a fourth) gives a slightly duller attack, but an interesting pitch bending effect. If tuned lower, the attack is sharper but the sound is more damped. Depending on the tuning and the condition of the heads, you may find some drums ring too much most often the snare. Sometimes t When tuning a drum, make sure to tighten nuts in opposite pairs, as you would with a car wheel. It's also worth applying heavy pressure to the centre of the drum head with your hand now and then in order to help even out the tension across the head. With a snare drum, a tight batter head gives a crisp, sharp sound, whereas a lower tuning provides a deeper, 'fatter' sound. Equally, setting the bottom head to be fairly loose gives a deep resonant tone, while a higher tuning gives a much crisper snare effect. The snare is probably the most frequent cause of unwanted rattles. Check the mechanics of the snare action and damp with masking tape if necessary. Some tissue paper folded between the snare wires and head can help control unwanted vibrations try moving the tissue pad from the edge towards the centre to find the optimum location. As regards the kick drum, a tight, well-tuned beater head gives an identifiable tone and a full body, whereas a looser head gives a more clicky sound with obvious attack you are looking for the compromise that best suits the musical style. Clearly, a harder beater will also provide more attack and click than a soft beater. In my experience there isn't much that can be done with cymbals (other than putting them back in the box), although radial strips of masking tape can help to dampen the ring, if found necessary. Once everything is tuned up properly, listen for squeaks and rattles. Loose hardware can be damped with masking tape, and a squirt of WD40 can cure most squeaks.
Tuning The Kit
All drum kits are not the same there are different types of batter head, shell, and drum stick the combination of which defines the overall sound. For example, snare drum heads with a black sound dot tend to have a fairly damped response, whereas plain ones ring on for longer. Heavy, thick heads tend to be louder and duller, and decay quicker than light, thin heads, which sound noticeably sharper in their attack and ring on longer. Likewise, cymbals will sound very different, depending on their size, manufacturer, shape and intended purpose.
er, I do know that if the kit is not tuned correctly, just as if the bassoon is not tuned, the results of a recording will be very disappointing. Tuning a drum kit is a reasonably complex job, not unlike tuning a piano there are lots of tensioning adjusters to twiddle and they have to be correct in relation to one another to provide the ideal tuning.
even tension by hitting the head close to the rim between each pair of adjusters the pitch should be constant all around the head.
his can be cured by simply retensioning the skin, without changing the actual tuning. Some tom-toms have an internal damper which can be used although in my experience they tend to rattle more than anything else and, since they tension the head at only one point, often don't do a particularly good job. A common solution is to make up a thin pad of tissue (or a handkerchief or duster), and tape this to the side of the head leaving the side facing the centre open to vibrate freely and thereby help to damp the ring. Alternatively, putting thin strips of plastic insulating tape in wide parallel lines (or even a noughts and crosses pattern) across the skin can help a lot too. Take this damping too far, though, and you will suck all the life out of the kit your drummer may as well play a pile of cardboard boxes so listen critically to any modifications you make.
Before the drummer starts to assemble the kit, ask if there are any elements that won't be used in the songs that you will be recording. Not rigging superfluous bits saves time and may reduce the likelihood of rattles, although empty fittings may also rattle more you'll have to make an assessment with the drummer at the time. I once spent twenty minutes before recording a live gig trying to optimise a close tom-tom mic and the associated gate in the desk channel. A week later, when I was remixing the multitrack, I discovered that that particular drum wasn't used in the entire recording!
Before even unfolding the first mic stand, it is absolutely essential that the drum kit sounds good in the studio. A soggy, rattly kit will always sound soggy and rattly, no matter what magic you do with your microphones and sound desk. A tight, good-sounding kit will be a lot easier to record and will sound a lot nicer as a result, so it's well worth spending an hour retuning and sorting out the kit, compared with a day messing about with gates!
Miking close to the plane of the cymbals (top picture) will reduce their relative recorded level. Miking from above the cymbals (bottom picture), on the other hand, will give a more cymbal-heavy sound.
Professional studios usually have a dedicated booth in which the drums (and drummer) are placed. This serves several purposes. First, it helps stop the drummer from breaking anything expensive out on the studio floor no, only joking! The walls of the booth may well be made of brick or stone, to give a hard, bright, reflective sound that often suits rock drumming, or it may be well damped and absorptive so that it adds no character at all. The booth also provides a very high degree of isolation so that the drum sound does not spill onto the mics over a string section on the studio floor, for example. Very few home studios have the luxury of such facilities, but it may be possible to improvise something similar if you have a large multi-room venue at your disposal.
If the drum kit has to be in the same room as the rest of the band, then acoustic screens are a good idea to try to stop too much drum sound finding its way into the other instrument and vocal mics. You can make very effective temporary screens out of piles of cardboard boxes or mattresses with simple wooden frames to hold them upright. You can either use a double mattress on its side, or several singles on end or a combination of the two the idea is to screen off as much of the kit from the rest of the band as possible. This won't provide total isolation of course, but it should make a considerable improvement and is generally worth the effort.
It's not just about stopping the drums from leaking into other instrument and vocal mics, though. If the backline is loud you may well find its spill getting into the drum overheads. Hanging a duvet from a ceiling beam in front of the kit to provide some screening for the overhead mics can be helpful in this regard. Give some thought to sight lines too the drummer may find it easier to play if he (or she) can see the rest of the band.
For more stripped-down jazz and dance-band kits, a single mic in front of the kick, on a level with the hi-hat and pointing at the snare, can do a fine job.
Enter The Microphones
Okay, so we have a well-tuned, good-sounding drum kit in an appropriate acoustic be that well-damped with mattresses and cardboard boxes, or in a live room. The next thing to do is decide on how to mic it up. Almost every engineer will have their own preferred technique, and this is one area where there really are very few rules. This is partly because, of all the band instruments, recorded drums are probably the one source where an inaccurate, unnatural sound is often a desirable thing.
Probably the most purist approach is required in acoustic jazz, so let's start with this situation. Much like orchestral percussion, the most natural sound can be obtained with a high-quality condenser mic positioned overhead and either in front of or behind the kit. Most engineers prefer large-diaphragm condensers in this role, although small-diaphragm mics can be just as effective in most applications. You will see almost everything used in this role, including the Neumann U87, TLM170, TLM103, KM84 and KM184; the AKG C414B, C3000B, C4000B, C1000S and C451; the Sennheiser E664; and the Audio Technica AT4033 and AT4040. Pretty much any cardioid condenser will do. On pure jazz recordings, Coles 4033 ribbon mics also work very well indeed.
Back in the days when I was working in mono television broadcasting (actually it was only ten years ago!), I found a single, wide-cardioid mic placed above and behind the drummer's head worked very well. Placing a stereo mic (the Soundfield works extremely well in this role) in the same place usually provides a very natural and well-balanced sound too. The exact mic position will need to be played around with a little, naturally, to find the best balance of drums and cymbals in the acoustic, but it is quite a good starting point.
It is worth bearing in mind that, while the cymbals tend to radiate sound in a bipolar or figure-or-eight pattern above and below the metal plate, the hi-hats tend to radiate sound horizontally. This information provides two clues to help position your mics. Firstly, you can reduce the level of cymbals relative to drums by bringing the mic closer to the plane of the cymbals, where they will radiate little energy. If you want more cymbal, move higher and more directly above them.
When using spaced drum mics for stereo, don't worry too much about them being set up symmetrically , as long as the balance of the instruments is right.
Since the cymbals radiate up and down, you can also place mics below the cymbals, closer to the drums themselves. In fact, this used to be a very common way of miking up kits in dance bands often with just a single condenser cardioid mic in front of the bass drum on the plane of the hi-hat (to ensure it was heard clearly), and angled towards the snare. I wouldn't advocate this technique these days, but it is an educational thing to experiment with. However, in general, a better overall kit sound is obtained by going overhead, and you can often find an acceptable balance of most of the kit anywhere between two and three metres above the floor, and either behind or in front of the kit. The more distant positions obviously require a good acoustic environment and low levels of spill from other instruments.
Clearly, there is the potential for your mic stands to overbalance, especially if you've got the mic on the end of a long boom arm extended high over a drum kit. For this reason it is important that you use stands with heavy bases, or that you weight the bases with sandbags or some other suitable, stable, counterweight. If using a stand with tripod feet, make sure that one leg extends directly under the boom arm to ensure maximum stability.
If the coincident stereo miking approach is not to your liking, or you have to work with closer overhead mics because of the ambient conditions, then the most popular configuration is a pair of cardioid condensers set up as overheads and spaced apart to cover each half of the kit separately. Again, some experimentation will be required to obtain the best balance, and don't worry about keeping the mics symmetrical either in their height or position. In this role they are effectively covering independent elements of the one large instrument. Place them where you find the best individual sound balance for the appropriate section of the kit much as you would place two mics in a grand piano to capture the high and low ends independently.
Miking The Kick Drum
In general, and certainly in acoustic jazz, the sound from the overhead mics will be the defining sound of the kit, and the basis on which you might want to add further 'spot' or 'accent' mics to obtain the desired composite sound. In almost every case, you will want to add a mic to bolster the kick drum.
The most common positioning for the snare mic is pointing over the rear lip of the drum towards the centre of the skin. Try not to have the mic too far over the drum, otherwise the drummer might inadvertently hit it!
The size and repetitiveness of the pressure wave emanating from a kick drum makes this a relatively tough job for any microphone to withstand. For that reason I never use my best condensers, and rarely use a condenser at all a moving-coil mic is actually better suited to the job, being inherently more robust. A good high-frequency response is clearly not required in this role, and a thicker diaphragm is less likely to become stretched and floppy over time. An extended low-frequency response is usually an advantage.
Given the physical abuse of the mic's diaphragm when recording a kick drum, I allocate one mic specifically to the purpose, and mark it clearly. This is for two reasons: firstly, after an extended period recording kick drums it is likely that the diaphragm will have stretched and deteriorated, and therefore not sound as good as a microphone used for less arduous duties. Secondly, I really don't want all my moving-coil mics to suffer the same fate unnecessarily, so marking one mic purely for kick drum duties preserves the life of the others.
Ideally, I would use a purpose-designed kick-drum mic, and most manufacturers have dedicated models, pretty much all of which are moving-coil designs. AKG have their D112 (and the classic D12 before that), Beyerdynamic have the Opus 65, and Sennheiser have the E602, for example. These are all fine performers, although the AKG model is substantially more expensive than the other two.
When placing the mic, it is a good idea to stay away from the centre of the drum head, because there will be a wider and better balance of harmonics closer to the edge. If the front head has been removed, or has a large enough hole cut in it, then place the mic on a stand and position it close to the beater head, about halfway between the centre and edge. Small changes in position can make a big difference to the sound, so before reaching for the EQ knobs make sure you have put the mic in the best place to start with.
Again, if the front skin is missing, make sure the unused fixings don't rattle. A blanket, heavy pillows or other dense fabric placed in the bottom of the shell and pressing against the beater head will help dampen any ringing and provide a much tighter, more rock-oriented sound.
If you place the snare mic too close to the hi-hat and on a plane with it, the blast of air from the hi-hats opening and closing will become audible.
Depending on the relative position of the overhead mics and the kick drum mic, the initial wavefront from the kick drum may reach them in different relative phases. If the polarities are reversed then a lot of low energy will cancel out, leaving a thin sound. It is therefore important that you experiment with the phase switch on the kick drum channel to find the position which provides the fullest bass end with the overhead mics faded up.
With most kick drums, I have found it generally useful to thin out the mid-range a little with the desk EQ, around about 450Hz, which reduces the tendency towards sounding like a cardboard box. A little presence boost around 3kHz helps the beater click to cut through, and you can filter off everything above about 5kHz to remove cymbal spill.
However, I recommend recording flat and introducing the EQ only during the mixdown stage, as the precise frequencies and amounts will depend on the other instrumentation and the overall mix. The key is to make the kick drum and bass guitar (or acoustic bass) complement one another without creating a stodgy, muddy bottom end. That often means thinning out the bottom of the kick drum to leave room for the bass.
At this stage, you should have a well-balanced, natural sounding drum kit with a nicely weighted kick drum and a good overall sound through the overheads, panned for stereo if required. If the drummer is a good one, the snare, hi-hat, toms and cymbals should all sound in the appropriate proportions. A surprisingly common problem, though, is for the drummer to be a little light on the snare drum and heavy on the hi-hat. If this is the case then you will have to consider adding another spot mic for the snare drum.
In those rare cases where you need more definition on the hi-hat, a good strategy is to mic from above on the opposite side to the snare.
Snare Drum & Hi-hats
There are as many ideas for miking snares as there are for the rest of the kit put together! A small pencil-type mic is the most practical to squeeze in above the snare, and this could either be a condenser like an AKG C451, or a dynamic mic like a Shure SM57. A dynamic mic is often the more attractive option, since it is more robust (the drummer might accidentally hit it) and it has a restricted transient response compared to the condenser mic. What this means is that the microphone's relatively heavy diaphragm can't respond quickly enough to follow the entire dynamic transient of the snare drum, and so acts as a kind of limiter. Whereas this would be a bad thing in the context of recording the percussion section of the LSO, it can be a very good thing in this situation, as it helps to produce a better-controlled, fatter, bigger snare sound. Again, because I believe mics are delicate little things to be handled with care and love at all times, I have dedicated a single dynamic mic for snare duty and it has already acquired a dent courtesy of a careless 'Rambo' drummer!
The mic should be placed near the edge of the head for two reasons: firstly to minimise the chances of it getting hit, and secondly because a fuller range of overtones is present near the edge. Also, being a cardioid mic, the proximity effect will help to lift the low end, giving an even fuller sound. Aiming it toward the area where the drum sticks hit the batter head will help to provide the maximum attack.
However, be wary of placing it too close to, or looking directly at, the hi-hat, since the 'chuff' of air produced when the hi-hats close is usually sufficient to cause blasting on the snare mic. A hypercardioid mic is sometimes a better choice than a cardioid, as it can usually be positioned to make more effective use of its nulls to reject the hi-hat. As with the kick drum mic, it is important to check the relative phase of the snare drum mic against the overheads and the kick drum. Normally oneposition of the polarity switch on the desk channel will sound obviously better fuller and more cohesive than the other.
An extra mic below the snare can help provide more tonal options, but it's usually necessary to switch it out of phase with the other snare mic.
If the overall snare drum sound is okay, but you want a little more 'zizz' from the snare wires, you could place the mic under the snare or even use mics above and below. If the latter, remember that the bottom mic must be switched to the opposite polarity of the top mic, because its diaphragm will be moving in the opposite direction to the one on the batter head mic when the drum is struck. Once recorded, a little boost around 250Hz can improve the fullness of the sound, but don't take it too far or you'll end up with it sounding muddy.
Since the hi-hat is in the area, I have rarely found it necessary to mike it up separately there is almost always enough hi-hat in the overheads and/or snare drum mic. However, should you feel the need for greater control and definition, another condenser mic can be placed about 10-15cm over the outside edge of the hi-hat, looking down on the side furthest away from the snare. Since the mic is seeing the hi-hat perpendicular to the plane of the cymbals it will be immune from the air chuff emitted when the hi-hats close. A little lift at the extreme high-frequency end (10kHz or so) can enhance the sizzle and sparkle if required.
Adding Tom-Tom Mics
In our purist, jazz-based kit, the toms very rarely need separate miking, because the main balance is obtained from the overheads. However, in more rock-oriented music everything is close-miked, as much for effect as anything but this is a situation of diminishing returns. The more mics you have open, the more spill. The more spill, the less control, and the harder it is to balance the kit.
If you're multi-miking the drum kit, then the overhead mics effectively act as spot mics for the cymbals. In this case, you can afford to mike fairly close to the cymbals, although it's best if you choose a direction and location to minimise spill from other instruments.
Some degree of control can be reinstated by using gates to remove the spill when there is no wanted sound entering each mic. However, gates inherently chop off the opening transient of the wanted sound, changing the character of the sound, so the result starts to become more artificial and processed hence the sometimes rather odd drum sounds we have become accustomed to today.
This multi-miking approach is, nevertheless, sometimes the best solution for a particular musical style, or if the entire band is playing in the same space (or on stage). In this situation the more distant overhead mic placement simply won't work, because of excessive spill, so we have to close-mike everything and balance the kit at the console. We have already talked about mic placement for the kick drum, snare and hi-hat, and these ideas still apply. The overhead mics can be brought a lot closer now, as, instead of trying to find a position where they capture the entire kit, they simply have to pick up the cymbals. How close you can go depends on the number and arrangement of the cymbals, how they are mounted (since this governs how far they will swing), and the kind of sound you are after, but somewhere between 20cm and 100cm is the typical range. Aim the mics towards the outer edges of the cymbals. Be careful with any EQ too much can leave the cymbals sounding like harsh sheets of tin and watch that headroom!
The tom-toms are best miked up like the snare drum, with dynamic mics positioned just over the rim looking at the centre of the head. The rear null of the mic should be angled up to reject as much cymbal as possible again, hypercardioid patterns often work better in this role, since they don't have to be angled quite so steeply, although watch out for that rear tail picking up something you don't want.
A single cardioid mic can be used to cover two closely mounted tom-toms, if necessary, but a wide polar pattern is preferable here.
With small toms mounted close together, you may get away with a single mic positioned between the two drums and pointing straight down the middle. However, this really only works well if you are using a mic with a very wide cardioid pattern, as both drums are well off axis of the one mic. A better approach is to use a mic with a figure-of-eight pattern, since this can be arranged to see both toms while also providing the maximum rejection of the cymbals above. However, this means either a ribbon mic (not really a good idea on a rock drum session) or a condenser mic. I have used a Sennheiser MKH30 in this role before, quite successfully, but it is a very expensive solution to a fairly trivial problem.
On kits where the bottom tom heads are removed, there is also the option of installing mics inside the toms, approaching the head from the inside. This technique provides much more isolation, both from neighbouring toms and the cymbals, and keeps the mics out of the drummer's way, but typically the sound is more resonant and has less of the stick attack than a more conventional external position. If possible, fade out any mics on drums which won't be used during the recording of a particular song, to minimise the spill, but, if in doubt, leave the mic up. There's nothing worse than everything in sharp, defined, close-up sound and then an occasional distant tom hit!
You can mic a tom-tom in much the same way as you would a snare.
One serious problem when you start multi-miking a drum kit is that of the forest of mic stands. The more metalwork you place in close proximity to the kit, the greater the risk that something will come in contact with something else as the kit starts to wander around the floor, as they almost always do. Then you will start to get percussive noises reaching the mics through the stands, rather than through their diaphragms, which is not good. Fortunately, the invention of the clip-on drum mic has really revolutionised the whole drum-miking scene. The traditional forest of mic stands can be completely dispensed with, since the clip-on mics stay exactly where you put them on the side of each drum. Even better, they can be positioned far more accurately than most other types of mic because they are so much smaller. Personally, I've only used the Sennheiser clip-on drum mic the E604 but I've heard good things about the slightly cheaper Beyerdynamic Opus 62 too, and I recommend investigating further if drum kits figure frequently in your recording life. They also provide the benefit that they are obviously drum and percussion mics (although they are very effective on brass instruments too), so there is less chance of your favourite vocal mics being trashed!
Once all the mics are in place, it's time to check the relative phasing again. The kick drum, being the loudest drum with the lowest fundamental frequency, is the reference and will tend to spill into all the other mics to some degree. With the drummer working around everything on the kit and just the kick drum faded up, fade up each other mic in turn and flip the polarity switch on its channel until you find the position that gives the fullest sound.
A complete drum kit setup the signal from the more distant mic in the background could be mixed in to make the sound more ambient.
Be careful if you are using top and bottom snare mics I usually set thephase of the bottom mic to give the best sound with the kick, and then set the top mic to the opposite position without checking further. It's more important that these two mics are opposite polarity than that they are both phased correctly with the kick, and since the bottom mic is closer, that seems the more logical reference. Don't bother checking the cymbal spot mics after applying a hefty dose of low cut to reduce drum spill there won't be much kick left in them anyway.
Recording & Mixing
With all your mics placed, plugged, phased and working properly, listen to each carefully for spill, rattles, buzzes, or anything else that shouldn't be there. You need to do this quickly, though, for two reasons: first, the drummer will get tired, and, second, the rest of the band will be leaning over your desk trying to tweak the EQs and push the buttons by now! You need to get them back in the studio and start rehearsing for a take.
Where the tom-tom only has one head, you can try miking inside the drum for greater separation and less attack.
Panning the mics for stereo is, once again, personal taste. Traditionally the kick drum is placed in the centre a hangover from vinyl record days. However, there are other advantages to keeping the kick drum in the centre, such as sharing the load on both channels of the power amp, and being able to put more and better-balanced LF energy into the listening room. Likewise, in surround, many engineers are placing the kick in all five channels.
With a minimalist miking scheme, the overheads will define the stereo image either as a coincident or spaced pair depending on how they have been rigged. Most engineers pan these fully left and right, but I prefer less width to create more space for other instruments and to make a more realistic sound stage.
If you have added a spot mic on the snare, it should be panned to the same position as the snare heard on the overheads, otherwise you will have a blurred and confused image. The easiest way to adjust the snare pan is to listen to the stereo overheads, focus on where the snare is in the image, and then fade up the spot mic. If the spot is panned to the centre initially, as it is faded up the image of the snare will pull back to the centre as the spot overwhelms the overheads. Pull the snare back down, pan the channel in the appropriate direction and fade up the snare again. This time the image of the snare will not pull as far, or may pull in the opposite direction, so adjust the pan a little more in the appropriate direction and try again. Repeat the process until fading up the snare just makes the snare louder, without pulling the image. It sounds long-winded, but will only take two or three goes with practice.
Keep an eye on your mic setup during recording, because you can get very unpredictable results if any mics or stands come into contact with the drum hardware.
If you have gone down the close-miking path, there should be enough separation between mics to allow you to pan anything pretty much anywhere. The toms are usually arranged to span the entire stereo image, with the kick in the centre, the snare and hi-hat panned either centrally or slightly right, and the cymbals scattered as appropriate to fill in the image. In surround, some engineers have chosen to put various drums literally all around the listener (which I personally find rather disconcerting), but the choice is entirely yours.
Depending on the drummer's playing style and the type of music, you may want to apply a little compression the snare and/or kick drum to provide a more even and thicker sound. Pay careful attention to the attack and release settings, since too fast an attack will damage the initial transients, and too long a release will negate the compression anyway. Start with a medium attack and short release, and adjust the threshold and ratio settings to achieve the desired degree of squash bearing in mind that more compression means louder spill.
Although many engineers pan their overhead microphones hard left and right, a narrower setting can often create a more realistic sound stage. Beware of setting too fast an attack time when compressing drums, as this can damage essential attack transients.
Now, with everything up and running, the session can proceed. There's just one last thing to mention a drum kit rarely remains in the state you left it for long! When the opportunity arises throughout the session, perhaps during a rehearsal for another take, audition your drum mics again to see if anything has changed. Fittings can work loose, the drum tuning can change with temperature and humidity in the studio, and if the kit creeps across the floor it may come into physical contact with the mic stands, causing unwanted microphony. If you have heavy mics on the overhead stands, the boom arms may even droop slightly. Keep a constant eye and ear on these things and the session should go smoothly.


text:
They break it, you buy it
Foreclosure isn't easy for anyone involved, particularly those homeowners who feel tricked into mortgages they can no longer pay and so face eviction. The results are often not pretty, as the Wall Street Journal reports in Buyer's Revenge:
The stucco subdivisions of Las Vegas are caught up in the nation's foreclosure crisis. These days, bankers and mortgage companies often find that by the time they get the keys back, embittered homeowners have stripped out appliances, punched holes in walls, dumped paint on carpets and, as a parting gift, locked their pets inside to wreak further havoc. Real-estate agents estimate that about half of foreclosed properties to be sold by mortgage companies nationwide have "substantial" damage, according to a new survey by Campbell Communications, a marketing and research firm based in Washington, D.C.
With the former homeowners losing their most valuable asset, it's tough to re-coup the lost costs after the destruction has occurred, so banks have given up on the stick and turned to the carrot: Cash rewards for leaving early or even just on time and not having trashed the home.
Could the same approach work for IT?
Inevitably, equipment and even software breaks: Motherboards die, laptop screens fizzle, a virus gets through the firewall and anti-virus. Sometimes, it's user error and other times it is faulty equipment. Often times, users will try and pass off the former as the latter, or pass the blame. According to some informal discussions in the forum, policies are generally clear: Employees are responsible for their possessions. But what about users who do take good care of their computers? While companies probably can't get away with docking pay stubs for extra help desk tickets, perhaps the inverse is true: Users who self-help with forums or go to other employees to fix basic configuration problems, rather than draining limited resources, could be eligible for a reward, either a small bonus or even just a gift card.
Good idea? Recipe for disaster? Let me know what you think at firstname.lastname@example.com, particularly if you've tried an incentive program before.
How was your Manic Cyber Monday?
"Cyber Monday" has come and gone, but was it just another rough Monday for you or did your network face a deluge of "recreational" traffic?
There's been a lot of debate over the years about whether "Cyber Monday," the online follow up to Black Friday where consumers supposedly click on to hot deals while at work, is more marketing hype than reality (coupon codes come and go, after all). This year, at least, there appears to have been some bump: Coremetrics reports sales were up 11%. The real day to watch out for? December 17th, the last day for free shipping to arrive by Christmas for most Amazon purchases:
How was your Cyber Monday? And how are you handling holiday shoppers, whether they sap productivity in a trickle or a torrent? Let me know at email@example.com.
Cyber Monday's here … but is it just another Manic Monday?
The Monday after a long vacation is rarely easy, and today will probably not be the exception for most IT professionals: There's a whole weekend-plus worth of things to fix up, schedules to resume … and the specter of Cyber Monday.
Hopefully, the latter is just a scary story marketers tell their bosses to make it look like their hip to this Internet thing. As one Business Week writer noted a few years back, there's a flaw with this image of a surge of workers slacking off and juicing their office connections to get the best deals:
Just one problem: It's not true, at least for many online retailers. Contrary to what the recent blitz of media coverage implies, Cyber Monday isn't nearly the biggest online shopping or spending day of the year. It ranks only as the 12th-biggest day historically, according to market researcher comScore Networks. It's not even the first big day of the season.
For most online retailers, the bigger spending day of the season to date was way back on Nov. 22, three days before Black Friday. What's more, most e-tailers say the season's top spending day comes much later, between around Dec. 5 and Dec. 15.
And this year, with more consumers than ever having home connections equivalent to or even faster than their work broadband, "Cyber Monday" might have started on Black Friday: Why deal with the unwashed masses when you can click, click, click your way to steep savings, without having to get up at 4 a.m. or even miss your leisurely breakfast? Search Engine Land reports that Amazon.com traffic grew 22% this Black Friday compared to the year before.
What's your experience? Are workers nose-to-the-grindstone today, or are you noticing heavy non-work traffic? What's your corporate policy on dealing with it? Filter, block or let it slide as long as the employees get their work done? I'd love to hear your strategies and war stories in the comments or at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Smoking might violate Apple warranty
I've written about dodgy computer warranties before, but Consumerist reports that Apple's taking an even broader view of contributing factors: There are two alleged cases where Apple warranties were voided due to second-hand smoke. I'm a little skeptical: The scenarios are not completely improbable, but Apple's silence on the matter when the company has such a sterling reputation for customer service is surprising.
Stuck in the same position? Take consolation from the IT Watch Blog's handy, lawyer-written guide on your warranty rights: It notes that often, your device is better covered under the default warranty than under extended warranties like AppleCare:
If a product is sold in breach of any of these warranties, the merchant is required by law to repair the product, replace the product or refund the purchase price for the product, all at their own cost. Thus, these warranties (as well as other consumer protection statutes) provide valuable tools to combat abuse. And the best part is these warranties are free of charge.
Merchants, however, can limit or even waive these implied warranties under the right circumstances. For example, if you purchase an item and the seller indicates in the bill of sale that it is sold "as is," or "with all faults," this constitutes a waiver of all warranties. In such a situation, the buyer should beware that he will be liable if the good is defective. A merchant may also waive implied warranties by indicating so, in writing, in an obvious or conspicuous manner (i.e., it cannot be hidden in the fine print).
Are you on the other side of the fence? I'd love to hear how you handle user-caused damage: Do you just chock it up to the cost of doing business, or does your company hold careless users accountable for when their devices are lost, damaged or stolen? I'd love to hear your thoughts, policies and stories either in the comments or, at email@example.com, or on Twitter at @Morisy. If requested, I'm happy to keep your information private.
Battling bullies when your job's at stake
As a news writer for SearchNetworking, there were times I could have been interviewing Rodney Dangerfield instead of IT professionals: They couldn't get no respect, they'd complain, and instead were forced to deal with executives with outsized egos and little regard for the facts on the ground. One of the most popular articles, in fact, was about dealing with the "the make-it-so CEO":
Even if you've never met one, you know the stereotype: curt, driven, my-way-or-the-highway CEOs who wash down their morning bowl of nails with a glass of Drano.
These "make-it-so" CEOs want their networks not only to work but to work for them without hassle, without passwords and without understanding how and why, even if those demands imperil network security. Quite often, hapless network admins have to leave the rest of the organization on hold while patiently explaining how to turn on a home router or why "password" is not a secure password.
At the time I wrote the article, the advice a lot of IT professionals gave in dealing with a tyranical boss was to simply quit: Life's too short, and your career matters too much, for it to be crushed by someone else's ego trip or insecurities.
But with unemployment up over 10%, that can be a tough pill to swallow. Fortunately, there's hope for reform, even if it's a difficult road ahead. A recent post on Harvard Business Review's Conversation Starter blog quoted David Rock's article Managing with the Brain in Mind: "[N]euroscience has also discovered that the human brain is highly plastic … Neural connections can be reformed, new behaviors can be learned, and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified at any age." The post then goes on and offers some advice on dealing with bullies in the here and now:
1. Document and define the bullying. Is it actually bullying? "Women who exert 'male' leadership styles are in danger of being perceived as bossy. Men who do the same thing are often praised as decisive," says John Medina. Look for patterns over time vs. isolated incidents, privately document the facts and specific actions. Finally, look at your company's culture. Is bullying or aggressive behavior rewarded?
2. Consider your options and make a choice. If the culture supports or rewards bullying, seriously consider if this environment is for you. "Much of the repeated mistreatment that characterizes bullying relies on a poisoned, sick workplace to permit and sustain the madness," according to WBI psychologists Ruth and Gary Namie. According to the Labor Day 2009 Survey conducted by the WBI, employers do nothing to correct the bully 53.6% of the time ,and 37% of the targets experienced retaliation for taking action.
3. Nip bullying in the bud — carefully. Privately derailing someone who is yelling at you by calmly repeating their name can be highly effective. Not so when your boss belittles you in a meeting. (Never out a bully in public; it will surely escalate things.) Once bullying is successful it rapidly becomes a habit — neurons that fire together, wire together — address it when it begins. The Bully at Work and the WBI discuss making formal complaints including legal parameters. In the Company of Women (Heim, Murphy and Golant) and Mean Girls Grown Up (Dellasega) deal specifically with Woman-on-Woman Bullying and relational aggression, providing concrete strategies for creating alliances, interrupting behavior patterns and moving forward effectively and productively.
4. Grow a support system. Hire a coach, talk to a therapist, or find a mentor or trusted friend. It's as important to get honest feedback about your experiences, perceptions, reactions, as it is to know that you are not alone.
Any other advice you can offer? Any caveats you see to the above approaches? Let me know by e-mailing me at email@example.com, or leave your thoughts in the comments.
Send mousetraps to the moon … or at least the cloud
Are you an e-mail provider? A CRM organization? An accounting firm? No? Then why do you you have employees managing these areas of your business? That's the question Mike Stubblefield asked earlier this week at Mass Technology Leadership Council's SaaS breakfast seminar. So maybe he was preaching to the choir, but lately more companies seem to be asking the same question Mike says is posed at Putnam Investments, where he's managing director: "Do we need to build the same mousetrap that somebody else has built?"
Well, there's a lot of good reasons, as it turns out, even if you are a cloud devotee. Also at the breakfast was Dan Richards, vice president of Constant Contact Labs, the edgier research division of cloud-based communications giant Constant Contact: He admitted that his company uses an on-site CRM appliance, which is a a bold statement considering CRM giant SalesForce is one of the darlings of the SaaS/cloud computing universe and one of the sponsor's of Dan's breakfast muffin.
So why not go with Salesforce, Google Apps or another mousetrap maker who specializes in that need and leave your IT to focus on your core business? Migration headaches is often a major head block, as are security concerns. What are your thoughts? Weigh in: Other community members are already debating cloud migrations in the forums.
Featured Guest Post: The Storage Economics Practice, by Devang Panchigar
We're pleased to welcome Devang Panchigar of StorageNerve into the community with this guest post on storage spending.
The Storage Economics Practice
We all buy storage, either in the SMB Space or at an Enterprise level. We use storage to run our business, to store structured and unstructured data. Data means everything these days. Without data we won't necessarily be able to do business.
But have we thought about the economics associated with storage? As consumers, we tend to consume more than necessary at times if we want to have enough buffer, or if we anticipate projected growth, business requirements, customer requirements, technology improvements, and the list goes on.
Lets stop for a minute and try to figure out what can we do to potentially keep up with all the use cases above, but not grow the data storage as rapidly. Rather, let's figure out means to compress, consolidate, and reduce footprint with our data.
I am in no way suggesting not to buy storage, but if a customer walks up to me and says, "We are growing our storage at 70% a year," but when I look at their balance sheet and the numbers don't reflect that growth, I will not buy into those storage growth numbers. Those are probably coming in from a vendor that is trying to push more products into the storage environment.
There are several aspects one should consider related to Storage Economics, how your shrinking IT budgets can still meet up with your growing business requirements, and what you can do to keep a balance between both.
With various aspects of Storage Economics below, some may be applicable in the SMB space, some in the enterprise space, and some really at all levels. These may turn into the building blocks of your Storage Economics practice:
- It's important to know what storage do you have and where you have it.
- Try to move away from fat provisioning to thin provisioning.
- Front-end storage virtualization using standard storage arrays in the back end.
- Run non-vendor specific SRM (Storage Resource Management) tools for storage optimization and storage management.
- Having a storage management tool is a must. You can still perform your daily task using various element managers.
- Industry standard average storage utilization numbers range between 35 to 45%. If you can push your storage utilization number up to 75 to 80%, it will help you drive the cost down phenomenally.
- Implement deduplication; verify your storage array supports deduplication natively. If not, it should be implemented in various parts of your storage like backup, unstructured data, etc.
- Run a heterogeneous environment with multiple vendors in it to keep balance relating to price structures.
- Though ILM is a forgotten word these days, make sure you run tiering within your storage environment that can help you move your data from higher SLA tiers to lower SLA tiers for cost containment purposes.
- Consider after warranty support for your storage hardware to independent service providers rather than manufactures.
- Look at extending the life of your storage arrays from a typical between 2.5 years and 3 years to 6 years.
- Implement technologies like automated storage tiering, storage deduplication, storage compression and many more in the market today.
- Storage environments have gotten very complex over the years with new storage technologies and switching technologies. At the end of the day, invest into a technology that benefits your organization, your infrastructure, your business model and your requirements.
- Leverage the use of outsourced computing models including Cloud technologies available in the market today. Could be private clouds or public clouds or really a mesh of these clouds technologies and offerings.
- Budget for your storage requirements and try to live by those even if you have to take drastic measures to keep it under budget.
- Try to gain more operational efficiencies within the storage environment.
- Understand the TCO with any new storage purchase, as cost of new storage could include several aspects of implementation including migration, consulting, downtime, missed SLA's, Training, etc.
- Try to reclaim your data or storage as old systems are retired or migrated.
- Check for inconsistencies in your Storage environment as those could result in missed SLA's, downtime and penalties.
- Do not over provision and do not over budget. Its just storage, if you need more you can buy more, but having storage sitting there doing nothing for years in anticipation of being used one day will cause your efficiencies to slip heavily.
- Do not create unnecessary storage management tasks and processes for your storage environment.
- Having backups and good working backups is very important, but do not tie down your storage with numerous copies of snaps, clones, mirrors, BCV's, etc for a rainy day, rather have a DR plan and copy a single instance of data remotely for DR purposes.
- Plot trends for your storage environment. See if trends can help you budget, forecast and provision your storage accurately.
- Remember the larger storage footprint you have, the larger your backup footprints will be, causing more storage space, more backup time windows, more network traffic, slower response times, more tapes, more offsite backups, more backup management cost and possibly more licensing cost.
- Get away from managing islands of storage; rather move to a more centralized storage management, long-term effects are amazing.
- Try to reduce licensing cost around storage software. The less storage you deploy, the less licensing per TB cost that you will pay.
There are numerous areas of storage management that the customers can try to bring in efficiencies that will help them better manage storage, reduce footprint, and reduce CAPEX and OPEX. It starts as a small practice within organizations and the value it creates grips the rest of the IT management teams.
So take this opportunity and plant the seeds for your Storage Economics practice now.
With more than 7 Years of IT experience, Devang is currently the Director of Technology Solutions and IT Operations at Computer Data Source, Inc. Along with various industry certifications, Devang holds a Bachelor of Science from South Gujarat University, India and a Master of Science in Computer Science from North Carolina A&T State University. You can catch Devang's Storage Blog at StorageNerve.com and enterprise commentary at GestaltIT.com
How to write effective IT e-mails: 5 simple steps
In IT, how often is is that the wires that get crossed aren't electric? By one estimate, almost 80% of people spend two hours or more a day on e-mail.
That's a lot of time for miscommunication to happen. Even if a poorly worded message sends someone off to do slightly the wrong task, valuable time has been wasted and the sender might be jeopardizing their shot at a promotion down the road. I spoke with Dianna Booher, author of E-Writing: 21st Century Tools for Effective Communication, and she said poorly-worded e-mails can even be career killers.
And it's not those accidental "Reply All"'s that kill careers: It's the e-mails that are only circulated internally, maybe even only to handful of people, that can come back to haunt employees without them even knowing it.
"Writing outside of the organization, nobody who controls your paycheck will likely read it," Dianna said. "Most e-mails internally get stuck in the files, circulated to 8 other people on the team, and they make impressions that last for a long, long time – and they are a picture of your thinking process. If they are disorganized, if they omit details that are relevant or if they are confusing, that's a reflection of how you think."
Booher offered to share some advice on what, in her opinion, makes a good e-mail:
Is no security better than bad security?
A stunning 96% of security products up for certification fail to achieve it on their first go, claims a report put out by ICSA Labs, a certification division of Verizon Business. The most common reasons for failure?
The report found the number one reason why a product fails during initial testing is that it doesn't adequately perform as intended. Across seven product categories core product functionality accounted for 78 percent of initial test failures. For example, an anti-virus product failing to prevent infection and for firewalls or an IPS product not filtering malicious traffic.
The failure of a product to completely and accurately log data was the second most common reason. Incomplete or inaccurate logging of who did what and when accounted for 58 percent of initial failures.
Is it time to head for the hills? Well, maybe not: A security certification authority telling you un-certified products simply don't work is a little bit like a rabbi telling you bacon isn't worth the health risks: I'll take my bacon, thank you very much, and you should probably keep using security products.
I thought Alan Shimel had an interesting take which might strike to the heart of the problem: It's not that the products don't work, it's that they aren't working the way they're installed.
Now, you have to take all of this with a grain of salt because of where the report is coming from. Obviously ICSA admittedly has a vested interest in seeing more products get tested and users demanding that products are tested prior to buying. But from my experience with far too many security tools, without some expert implementation getting this stuff to work as intended is worse then putting together one of those do it yourself pieces of furniture that you get from Staples or Office Depot. As an industry we have to do better to making our solutions easier to install, easier to use and easier to see the value.ashimmy.com, The Ashimmy Blog, Nov 2009
So often, implementation and execution are half (or more) of the battle. Larry Walsh over on ChannelInsider worries about a larger threat from the report, however: That proper protection will simply take a backseat as users conclude that security doesn't work anyways, so why bother.
The problem with this report is that it's coming at a time when end users are questioning the value of the products they've spent millions of dollars on. While even bad security products will provide some level of threat protection, the ICSA findings could give end users some reason for pause when considering new purchases. Many security solution providers are complaining that end users—particularly SMBs—are reticent to invest in new security technologies because they don't believe they're at risk or don't have the budget. The ICSA findings could give them a new reason to doubt the need for security investment.
I imagine those users will be in the minority: There are still too many high-profile data leakage cases, with ever increasing fines, for business owners. What do you think? Have you seen security products fail to operate as promised, or operate at all? Let me know in the comments or at firstname.lastname@example.com.
The WSJ takes aim at your IT policies
The Wall Street Journal gives an inside cover today to an old question: Why can't I pick the technology I use in the office? (Skip the paywall with Google) The Wall Street Journal's certainly not the first to address the topic: Slate tackled it this past summer, with countless office workers grumbling the same questions well before, during and after these and other pieces.
The article tackles the costs, infrastructure and support challenges in handing over IT decisions to users, but generally is pretty keen on a rosy future where companies cut costs using consumer tools, support for non-standard choices is handled via internal user self-help forums, and data leakage is taken care of via virtual machines launching here, there and everywhere.
Read it and let me know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter at @Morisy, or via firstname.lastname@example.com. I'm more than happy to keep your information private if requested.
More on users and IT:
- CIO's cost-cutting measures include move to Gmail
- Everyone hates your insecure password rules
- Help user-IT relations with a party: So crazy it might just work


text:
St. Mary's Syrian Orthodox Church, Winder, GA
26 South Williams Street
Winder, GA
United States
See map: Google Maps (770) 435-2295 http://www.stmaryschurchatlanta.com Sunday Services: 9:30 A.M -12:30 P.M Vicar: Very Rev. Joseph C. Joseph Corepiscopos Corepiscopos 349 Covered Bridge Place, Smyrna, Georgia, 30082 404-625-9258 770-435-2295 firstname.lastname@example.com Other Priests/Deacons: Rev. Fr. Bijo Mathew |


text:
Hi everyone
We just launched a new multimedia story from Ethiopia about street children and work carried out by an NGO there.
The story is mentioned in the February issue of PDN in the article "Turning NGOs into paying clients".
It's an 11-minute piece in full screen flash and it requires a decent broadband connection…
Check it out right here:
Kind regards
Poul Madsen Bombay Flying Club
by Poul Madsen at 2010-02-12 09:51:48 UTC | Bookmark | | Report spam→


text:
This jQuery plugin provides access to
the local file system (for documents loaded from a file://
URI) to load and save file contents from the browser.
The code is based on TiddlyWiki's self-saving capabilities.
Note that the TiddlySaver applet is required on Opera and WebKit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome). The applet has to be present in the same folder as the respective HTML document.
The source code is currently hosted in TiddlyWiki's Subversion repository.
Feedback is welcome.
: load contents from file
$.twFile.save(filePath, content)
: save contents to file
$.twFile.copy(dest, source)
: duplicate existing file
N.B.: This is not supported on all browsers.
normalizes specified absolute file path
N.B.: All file paths must be absolute (e.g.
or C:\temp\foo.txt
(full documentation in the code comments)
Since the TiddlySaver applet cannot be injected synchronously
into the document, this is done asynchronously during
This means that the plugin is not guaranteed to work properly until after all these handlers have completed.
The plugin is designed to work with UTF-8 encoded text files. However, support in Internet Explorer is broken, and can only reliably save files that are encoded with the ANSI subset of UTF-8. In the case of HTML files, this problem can often be avoided by using HTML entity encodings.
Internally, the plugin uses four separate drivers to implement the functionality on different browsers:
: uses the FileSystemObject
built into Internet Explorer 5 and above
: uses the XUL libraries built into Firefox
: uses a custom Java applet that works on Safari, Chrome and Opera
: uses an ancient (and slow) binding technology to call Java runtime library routines directly - only works on Opera
Download this document (and TiddlySaver if necessary) and open it from the local disk.
This demo illustrates self-saving capabilities by passing
to $.twFile.convertUriToLocalPath
using the return value in load and save functions.


text:
Amethystine python (Morelia amethistina)
Kingdom | Animalia |
Phylum | Chordata |
Class | Reptilia |
Order | Squamata |
Family | Pythonidae |
Genus | Morelia (1) |
The amethystine python is classified as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List (1) and listed on Appendix II of CITES (2).
Information on amethystine python is currently being researched and written and will appear here shortly.
This information is awaiting authentication by a species expert, and will be updated as soon as possible. If you are able to help please contact:
IUCN Red List (December, 2010)
http://www.iucnredlist.org -
CITES (October, 2009)


text:
Willi Baumeister art links
More options
Link to this pageReport a broken link
Original works by Willi Baumeister available for purchase at art galleries worldwide
Art Institute of Chicago Museum of Modern Art, New York City13 works online when last checked Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, Cardiff Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna O Waiwhetu, New Zealand Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri Museum of Modern Art, New York City - Provenance Research ProjectFigurative with Red Elipse, 1920African Play, IV, 1942 Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian Art, New York City North Carolina Museum of Art, RaleighSport und Maschine Saint Louis Art Museum, MissouriStill Life with Head, 1930 Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (in German) Head State Museums of Berlin Tate Gallery, London, UK Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid- to switch to English, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "English Version"- images are zoomable; click on the "expand" icon below the detail image University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany (in German) Walker Art Center, Minnesota
Christie's Past Sale Archive NEW!(database goes as far back as 1991; images go about as far back as 1999) Lempertz Auction Gallery, Cologne, Germany -- Highlights from Past SalesScroll down to the highlights from the Spring 2005 sale Sotheby's Sold Lot Archive NEW!(database goes as far back as 1998; images where permitted by copyright go about as far back as 2001)
Willi Baumeister in the Artchive Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur (in German) (a welcome screen is displayed for a couple of seconds before the search results appear) Ciudad de la Pintura (in Spanish) New York Public Library Digital Gallery Additional Image Search Tools: NEW! (SafeSearch set to "strict"; go to Advanced Search (Flickr/Google) or Preferences (Bing) to change) Flickr: "Willi Baumeister" Google Images: "Willi Baumeister" Bing Images: "Willi Baumeister"
Museo Virtual del SurrealismoStanding Figure with Blue Plane
Union List of Artist Names (Getty Museum) Reference sheet with basic information about the artist and pointers to other references. Oxford Dictionary of Art (eNotes)
Search Amazon for books related to Willi Baumeister Search AllPosters for reproductions of works by Willi Baumeister
We cannot be responsible for the content of external web sites.All images and text on this Willi Baumeister page are copyright 2011 by John Malyon/Specifica, Inc., unless otherwise noted. Note that the listings on this site are a unique compilation of information and are protected by copyright worldwide.


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Hi there, I saw your comment on my blog&just wanted to thank you for your kindness !! I agree with you that it was amazing of Josie to run this donation for Nicole&get her the incredible opportunity to see/meet KoRn. Just in case you are interested and haven't seen it yet, here is the link to a great interview that Nicole did with Jonathan. http://kornrow.com/nicoles-kornrow-interview-jonathan-davis/
Thank you again!